My niece Mariah is 8 years old. She's adorable and sweet and I miss her terribly. I haven't seen her in person since January and that's simply too long.

Today, I'm talking to her on the phone and she, once again, is asking me about if I have a girlfriend. Now, ever since she was born I've been OUT and I have never hid that from her. She's visited my very gay apartments; she's seen my gay posters; I've explained to her that I have boyfriends, not girlfriends (of course, I don't really have anything, but that's another story); she used to say I would have "girlboyfriends," she just couldn't rid of the "girl" part of it; I sent her a book years ago about different families with a picture of my then-boyfriend and I on the front cover; just in January she and I had a conversation about this very same subject of girlfriends and I said I was Gay and she didn't believe me and then we moved on.

She's 8 and I don't expect her grasp everything at all. So, today, she once again, this time with her babysitter on the speaker phone with her, talked to me about girlfriends and what women I liked and so forth. And I, once again, told her that I have boyfriends and so forth. This is the excerpted and dramatically enhanced conversation:

Mariah: "Are you gay?"
Me: "Yep"
Mariah: "Nu huh"
Me: "Yu huh"
Mariah: "Nu huh"
Me: "Yu huh"
Mariah: "Nu huh"
Me: "Yu huh"

And so on for a really long time. She and babysitter in the background with giggling and not sure of how to respond anymore. I finally said, "Mariah, I've told you this before. This is not a secret. You've heard about this before. I am gay and I don't have girlfriends, I have boyfriends." (If only that were true.) That came out, in writing, kinda meanspritted, but in talking it wasn't. I said it very lovingly. Anyway, we then moved on to other subjects.

Later, she asked me what my favorite color was. I said it was green, but I also liked blue and purple. She asked me if I liked pink. Oh, how hilarious. She was putting me with pink because of the gay thing. How funny is that? So I said, "Sure, I like pink, but it's not my favorite." And then I said, "But I do really like Pink" (the pop music woman) and then started to sing about getting a party started. We then moved on into which pop music stars we like-- mostly the ones she knows about, which revolve around the basic bubblegum pop variety types. She then asked me if I had a crush on Michael Jackson. Uh, no. But I then went into how my sister, her mother, did have a crush on him big time when she was little in the '80's.

Besides, I said, out the guys we had been talking about "I do think Ricky Martin is cute." And then she laughed and said she really liked Billy Gilman and Aaron Carter-- very young cutesy boy pop stars who are about her age. We eventually moved on to other subjects and sang songs together and laughed, but I think she's rather confused about me again. But I know she's beginning to get it more and more nowadays, what with the stereotypical reactions and questions now. At the young age of 8 she's already made some very stereotypical determinations about what gay is and isn't, even though she doesn't understand. But at least, hopefully, she'll grow to understand over time and I'm thankful that I have a family that understands how important it is for me to be OUT to her all the while.

Besides, I wouldn't have it any other way.